Saturday, August 5, 2017

An Evening Of John Lennon is coming to City Winery Chicago tomorrow night, August 6, featuring Phil Angotti, Tommi Zender, Casey McDonough, Joe Camarillo, and Dick Schmidt. These guys are veterans of the local music scene and have successfully staged this retrospective before. Tickets are $15; the music starts at 7:30 p.m.

The 23rd Annual Black Harvest Film Festival opened today at the Gene Siskel Center in downtown Chicago and runs through the end of the month.

The Chicago Art Book Fair, an international showcase of “zine-makers, book artists, comic makers, photo book creators RISOgraph printers, and self-publishers,” makes its debut November 16 through 19 at the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel at 12 S. Michigan Avenue. It will be free and open to the public.

That new video Derrick Anderson talked about filming a while back for his impossibly catchy song “When I Was Your Man” is now available. Taken from his recent solo album A World Of My Own, the stark but fun clip features him on bass, along with Debbi and Vicki Peterson of The Bangles, and Kim Shattuck from The Muffs. Anderson has been performing with The Bangles as their bass player for some time now, and he got them, along Shattuck, Matthew Sweet, The Smithereens, and other power pop stars to help out on the album. As I said here before, I’d love to see Anderson go on tour with that all-star band, and come to Chicago.

In other Bangles news, the band’s 1984 album All Over The Place, was named as one of National Public Radio’s The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. Join Mitchell’s Blue came in at Number One. Vicki Peterson has formed a new band called Action Skulls with John Cowsill and Bill Mumy. “Mainstream,” a satiric and jangling tune from their upcoming album Angels Hear, can be heard on The Bangles Facebook page.

The always essential website The Second Disc recently reported on Leave Home: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of The Ramones’ second album. Writer Joe Marchese stated that the three-CD/one-LP box set comes with a remastered version of the album, a new mix on CD and vinyl, and a bonus disc with 33 rare tracks. In another Second Disc post, Marchese covered The Who’s upcoming Maximum As and Bs: The Complete Singles five-CD box set. It comes with a 48-page booklet.

Chicago venue The Elbo Room is sponsoring the ninth annual I Am Fest – International Art and Music Festival on August 19. The day-long event will actually be held at the more spacious The House Of Blues and feature music acts, art, and photography. The Smoking Popes, Sin Anestesia, and Littlebirds are scheduled to perform.

The American Ska-Thic festival will celebrate its 25th Anniversary on August 19 at Metro. MU330, Coolidge, The Eclectics, Detroit Rude Boy Society, Skapone, Tango Wedding Band, and DJ Chuck Wren will be performing.

Carlos Santana’s Transmogrify Tour comes to Ravinia next Friday, August 11 and Saturday, August 12.

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About This Blog

Broken Hearted Toy is an eclectic celebration of creativity, with over 1,900 posts since 2009.

It's based in Chicago and covers power pop, garage, cutting-edge, and 1960s rock; along with occasional bits on art; literature; and theatre.

Top of the hill is a nice place to be at. - - - "Elevated Observations" by The Hollies.

Check out some of my other creative endeavors.

Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff is a weekly Internet show created by and starring Jeff Kelley. It mostly consists of comedy bits and obscure 1960s garage rock set to vintage TV and film clips but also spotlights entertainment events around Illinois.

Over the past few years, my wife Pam and I created a handful of series (each episode was about two minutes long) that were shown on Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. They included Manchester Gallery (see description below); Old Days, which I hosted in the persona of a cranky old man named Fritz Willoughby; Roving Reporter, where I played the clueless title character; What's With Terry?, a performance arts program; and Hanging With The Hollies, a takeoff on Breakfast With The Beatles.

I've also worked with Kelley and contributors Willy Deal and David Metzger on comedy clips. Jeff just kicked off a new season of Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff, with some cool graphics to go with his new regular features. Willy Deal is onboard, and I'm hoping to join them for some creative endeavors in the near future.

I'm particularly proud of this 21-episode comedy series Pam and I created for Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. Each installment was a few minutes long, and featured me portraying Terrence, the curator of a pop culture museum.

My original concept was to make up funny descriptions for some of the rock memorabilia I've collected, but it soon morphed into a sit-com format where my character's inept and devious ways constantly got him into trouble. The two running themes that fueled the action concerned a purloined Beatles button, and the scrambled eggs Paul McCartney was eating when he got the inspiration to compose "Yesterday."

I'm currently exploring options for pitching my Manchester Gallery web-based series to a media company that could help it reach a much larger audience.

This Chicago-based magazine has been covering rock music for close to 40 years, and has a readership of 165,000. I started contributing in 1987 and have written several feature stories and far too many album reviews to count. The Illinois Entertainer can also be found in an online edition.

After starting Broken Hearted Toy a few years back, I asked I.E.'s editor and publisher if I could post material that I had previously written for their publication, and they graciously granted me permission to do so.

Chicago Art Machine was a web-based publishing company run by Editor-in-Chief, Kathryn Born, and Managing Editor, Robin Dluzen, that included Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago DIY Film,Chicago Performance And Trailers, and TINC. Most of my submissions appeared in Chicago DIY Film and Chicago Performance And Trailers, although I contributed to all the online Chicago Art Machine publications.

Unfortunately, Chicago Art Machine has folded. I greatly enjoyed working with Kathryn and Robin, and I'm glad to see they've gone on to other projects in the arts and journalism. I hope to work with them again at some point in the future.

I was a writer and performer with this local comedy group from 1989 to 2009. Amusical parody I wrote about Arthur Andersen's Enron crisis was covered by the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and other publications.

Famous In The Future continues to perform in the Chicago area, and has appeared at every one of the Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins theatre festivals that are held each August at the Mary-Arrchie Theatre. Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins will celebrate its 25th Anniversary in August, 2013.

Famous In The Future has a musical side project called The Rut, which occasionally plays at concert events organized by whitewolfsonicprincess, a band that's an offshoot of Black Forest Theatre.

I'm an active member of SCBWI, (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) and have written two Middle Grade fantasy novels that I'm shopping to literary agents. I've finished a mystery/satiric novel that takes place amidst Chicago's alternative music scene in the mid-1980s.

Broken Hearted Toy

The blog title comes from the line, "I'm the brokenhearted toy you play with" in the song "I Can't Let Go" by The Hollies. One of the great original British Invasion bands, The Hollies continue to have an immense influence on power pop bands to this day, and have finally been inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here is a video of "I Can't Let Go" being performed in 1966.